


A Fluffy Story

by Severely_Lupine



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Next Generation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-21
Updated: 2009-11-21
Packaged: 2017-10-03 13:05:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,626
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18420
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Severely_Lupine/pseuds/Severely_Lupine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Why do they keep sending first years into the Forbidden Forest?</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Fluffy Story

"This is your fault, you know," Rose muttered, trudging through the grass several paces behind Filch.

"Was not," whispered her cousin Albus. "It was Scorpius's idea to try to open the Chamber of Secrets."

"But you didn't stop him!" Rose chastised. "And if you'd only read Hogwarts, A History, you'd know there's nothing _in_ the Chamber any more."

Albus rolled his eyes. "I didn't need to read it, Rose. Dad and Mum have told that story about five times, and I know your own parents must have mentioned it once or twice."

Rose stuck her chin out and puffed up a bit. "Then why did you two imbeciles feel the need to try to get in?"

Behind them both, Scorpius laughed. "You don't think I'd want to get in if I thought there was still a live basilisk down there!"

"Why, then?" Rose barked.

Scorpius shrugged. "To see if I could."

Rose peered at him through narrowed eyes. Her tone softened. "There's nothing wrong with being in Gryffindor, Scorpius. You don't need to try to speak Parseltongue in order to earn your dad's respect. I'm sure he's proud of you either way."

Scorpius frowned and stared at the ground in front of him as he walked, all bravado gone. "Clearly you don't know my father." Then he glared at her and said nastily, "Besides, no one asked you to follow us! If you hadn't made all that racket in the corridors, begging us to slow down because you couldn't catch up, Professor Longbottom wouldn't have caught us and we'd have been there and back with no one the wiser."

"Oi!" said Albus. "She was just trying to help. And I _should_ have talked you out of it."

"Well, it doesn't matter now, does it?" Rose said, trying not to let either of them see how much Scorpius's words had stung.

Neither of them responded, as they were now standing outside Hagrid's hut, and Filch was banging on the door.

After a moment, Hagrid appeared, a broad smile behind his graying beard. "'Ello, kids!" he boomed.

"They're here for detention!" Filch barked. "So don't you be letting them off with something easy!"

"What? Easy?" Hagrid asked, looking insulted at the very idea. "Why, that'd be playin' favorites, wouldn' it? I'd never do summat like that."

Filch turned to leave, mumbling under his breath. Once he'd gone well out of hearing distance, Hagrid winked at Albus. "I'm jus' surprised yeh got caught. I'd'a thought yeh'd use your dad's invisibility cloak."

Rose's eyes widened in shock. Albus merely sighed. They both looked at Scorpius, whose mouth was gaping open.

"You've got an invisibility cloak?" he asked Albus.

"Oh," said Hagrid, looking ashamed. "Never mind, never mind. Forget I said tha'." He went back into his hut, leaving the door cracked.

"No, I don't," Albus said wearily, now that the secret was out. "James nicked it at Christmas. I don't think Dad's noticed it's gone. But you mustn't tell anyone!"

"I won't," said Scorpius with a grin.

"_Anyone_," Rose repeated for emphasis.

"I said I won't!" Scorpius snapped at her.

Hagrid appeared in the doorway, four baskets slung over his arms and two lanterns in one hand. "Now, are you kids ready?"

"What are we doing?" Rose asked.

"Pickin' flowers!" Hagrid pronounced. Albus sniggered. "Moonflowers," Hagrid clarified. "They only bloom at night, so that's when they're easiest ter spot. Madam Pomfrey needs some for the next batch o' Wolfsbane Potion."

"There's a werewolf at the school?" Scorpius asked, nearly squeaking in panic.

For a moment, Hagrid looked again like he'd been caught, then he frowned at Scorpius. "So what if there is? Just 'cause the Ministry allows 'em to attend doesn' mean they want their affairs made fodder fer gossip. Don't tell me yeh're scared," he challenged.

Scorpius gulped. "Nope. Just . . . curious," he said, clearly lying.

But Rose was curious. She only just stopped herself from asking when a large, fawn Irish wolfhound stuck its head between Hagrid and the door.

"This 'ere's Sandy o' course," Hagrid said as the dog followed him out and he shut the door behind them. He handed each of the kids a basket, keeping one for himself. "I reckon it's best if we split up. Albus, you can come with me, and Rose and Scorpius, you can take Sandy. Jus' come back here when yeh've filled your baskets."

"Hagrid, where are we going?" asked Albus as he stroked Sandy's head absently.

"Into the Forbidden Forest," said Hagrid as if it was the most obvious answer in the world. "Yeh don't see many flowers out here, do yeh?"

"The Forbidden Forest?" Rose asked, scandalized. "But isn't that dangerous?"

"Nah," Hagrid said, leading them toward the trees. "The spiders've all been chased out and the centaurs've promised not to hurt any humans who aren't a threat to 'em."

"But if isn't dangerous any more," Scorpius asked, "why do they still call it the Forbidden Forest and warn us not to go in?"

"Oh, blimey," Hagrid muttered, then stopped and turned to look at them all seriously. "Yeh mustn't tell anyone I said that. We can't have students wanderin' into the forest just 'cause they think it won't kill 'em."

"I won't tell anyone," said Scorpius, grinning again.

Hagrid looked at him dubiously. "I hope yeh're less like yer dad than yeh look, Scorpius," he said.

Scorpius suddenly looked quite angry. "I'm in Gryffindor, aren't I?" he spat.

"That yeh are," Hagrid said, relaxing, then nodded as if the matter was settled and led them on.

"All righ'," said Hagrid when they'd reached the tree line, handing one of the lanterns to Rose. "We'll go this way, and you two go that way. If yeh get lost, just send up some yellow sparks and I'll come find yeh." He walked away before any of them could say anything. Albus threw a slightly worried look at Scorpius and Rose, then chased after Hagrid.

Rose and Scorpius stood there for a long moment, watching Sandy root around in the grass.

"I don't even know what moonflowers look like," Scorpius muttered after a while.

Rose huffed in exasperation. "Honestly! Don't you read _anything_? They're sort of round with--Oh, never mind. I'll show you when I find some. Just look for flowers." With that, she stormed off into the forest with Sandy walking easily beside her.

At first she thought that Scorpius would just follow silently after her, but within ten seconds, he'd jogged up to walk on the other side of Sandy.

"Can't you see it?" he asked her, a strange urgent note in his voice--though that may have just been his effort to keep up with her fast pace.

"What?" she asked.

"The future. Laid out before you."

Rose let out a high pitched grunt. "Hmph! My mum says Divination's a lot of rubbish."

Scorpius rolled his eyes. "I'm not talking about Divination."

"Then what are you talking about?" she asked. "Or is this your pathetic attempt to wind me up?"

"I'm talking about us!" he hissed. At her sharp look, a strange tint colored his face and he looked forward, but continued hastily. "You and me and Albus. Haven't you seen it yet?"

"I don't know what you're talking about," Rose said, "and you're distracting me. We're looking for something, remember?"

He ignored her. "Haven't you noticed the way the teachers look at us? The way even some of the other students look at us?"

Rose decided that perhaps the quickest course of action was to indulge him, let him say whatever it was he was trying to say so they could move onto finding the moonflowers and getting back to the castle. "And how do they look at us?"

"Well, you _saw_ how they look at me!" Scorpius told her. "Just back there, with Hagrid. That . . . distrust. Like they expect me to stab them all in the back."

"Don't be silly." But she knew it was true. Hagrid didn't look at many people the way he'd looked at Scorpius.

Scorpius must have known she knew, as he didn't answer her protest. "And Albus," he continued. "They look at him like . . . like they expect him to do something amazing at any moment. And you--"

"No one looks at me strangely!" Rose objected before he could finish.

Scorpius moved around the dog to walk on Rose's other side. "Right." He flicked a strand of her curly auburn hair. "The spitting image of Hermione Granger. No one has _any_ expectations of you, do they?"

"What are you trying to say?" He was beginning to get on her nerves.

"Don't you see how already the teachers look to you expectantly whenever they ask a question, like they expect your hand to already be in the air?"

"That's because my hand usually _is_ already in the air."

"That's not--" Scorpius bit off, then said more deliberately, "The fact that you meet their expectations doesn't make the fact that they have them any less insulting."

She looked at him with disbelief. "Expecting me to be top of my class is insulting?"

"Yes!" Scorpius barked, but it sounded like a plea for understanding. "They expect you to be a know-it-all because your mother is a know-it-all. They expect Albus to be a hero because his father is a hero. And they expect me to be a traitor because--" He looked away. He took a deep breath and continued more calmly. "All I'm saying is that if any of us ever want to be anything but our parents' children�"if we ever want to have identities of our own--we'd better start now."

Rose thought for a moment, then nodded. "You're right. I'll start keeping my hand down and doing poorly in school, Albus will have to be as selfish as possible, and you should start wearing Muggle clothes and talking about how you want to marry a Muggleborn one day."

Scorpius glared at her, his grey eyes shining eerily in the moonlight. "Fine. I hope you enjoy living in your mother's shadow," he said, then stormed off ahead of her through the trees.

Rose continued at the pace she'd been walking, chin up, resolutely ignoring the niggling voice in her head that told her to call out to him and apologize, even when Sandy gave a soft woof in Scorpius's direction.

When the moonflowers came into view, she nearly stepped on them. But she managed to avoid crushing them and shooed the dog away, then set the lantern on the ground and stooped to start picking the flowers, dropping them into her basket.

"Scorpius!" she shouted in an irritated tone. "I've found the moonflowers! Come and fill your basket so we can go back!"

But there was no response.

Rose peered into the forest ahead of her. It was growing quite dark as the trees blocked out the light of the waxing moon. The lantern light didn't break through more than twelve feet of the forest around her. She felt a chilly breeze and repeated to herself Hagrid's assurance that the forest was safe.

When her basket was nearly full, Rose noticed Sandy looking anxiously into the forest, toward where Scorpius had gone. Rose began to wonder what had happened to him and why he hadn't responded to her call. He hadn't been walking _that_ much faster than her, had he?

"Scorpius!" she called again, trying not to sound nervous. "I'm done here! Come get yours so we can leave!"

There was no response.

She pulled up a few more flowers and shoved them into her basket, then stood and picked up the lantern, holding it out in front of her. Just as she was debating whether to go look for Scorpius herself or send up sparks to get Hagrid to come find them, Sandy started barking. The next moment, she heard the sounds. A faint rusting at first--but it quickly grew to a succession of thunderous crashes.

Scorpius barreled through the trees, his wand out, his basket nowhere to be seen. He crashed into her, not bothering to apologize as he wrenched her arm nearly out of its socket, dragging her along.

"Come on!" he shouted. "Run! _Run!_"

Rose would have demanded he tell her what was going on, but that question was answered the next moment when she looked over her shoulder and saw a gigantic monster crashing through the trees toward them.

"_What did you do?_" she shouted at Scorpius.

He pulled her along and said between huffs, "I think I . . . stepped on its . . . tail."

Rose glanced back again. On second look, the monster looked like some kind of giant dog. Sandy was running along side it, snapping at its legs, though she could barely reach its knees. One of the giant dog's head's snapped back at her, but she leapt out of the way.

_One of?_ Rose looked again. A giant, three-headed dog. She knew that from somewhere.

"Fluffy!"

Scorpius glanced at her, clearly thinking she was raving.

"It was guarding the Philosopher's Stone when--" She cut herself off. While running for your life was not the time for explanations. "I know how to stop it!"

"I'm all ears!" he shouted back, ducking under a low branch and pushing her down along with him, as she hadn't seen it coming.

"We'll be out of the forest soon," she told him, "and the trees won't be slowing it down any more! Can you hold it off? I'll only need a few moments!"

He glanced back at Fluffy, then nodded. "Yes!"

And then they were through the tree line, running out onto open grass, and Scorpius released her arm. Rose spared the briefest glance around, but Hagrid was nowhere to be seen. Unfortunately, during the second she'd taken her eyes off the ground in front of her, she'd tripped over a rock and went sprawling into Scorpius, sending them both tumbling to the ground just as Fluffy burst through the trees, Sandy still snapping ineffectually at its heels.

Wasting no time, Scorpius rolled over onto his back, propping himself up with an elbow, and pointed his wand at the beast.

"_Stupefy!_"

Rose didn't look to see what effect it--or the other hexes Scorpius was throwing--had on the monster. She was too focused on getting her own spell just right.

When she looked up from where she lie next to Scorpius, one of the dog's heads was hovering over them hungrily. Then, just when she thought it would chomp down on them, its eyelids became droopy and it started swaying.

The harp she'd Conjured had begun to play.

Within seconds, all six eyes were closed. The next moment, Fluffy fell with a huge crashing thud at their feet.

Scorpius turned round, wondrous eyes on her. Her own look of shock wasn't so different.

Then he raised an eyebrow and his features settled into a strangely amused look. "Let me guess. Hogwarts, A History?"

"Actually," she said, "Mum told me about that one." She stared at the sleeping dog (as opposed to the smaller one, which was barking like mad) and muttered, "Sometimes it helps to be my mother's daughter."

When she looked back at Scorpius, he had a very odd look on his face. Then his mouth quirked into a cocky, lopsided grin. "I bet my dad would have cried like a baby if that thing had come for him."

"Good thing you're a Gryffindor, then," said Rose. "For both of us."

"Yeah," he said, and suddenly the air felt heavy and quiet and Rose didn't know quite what to say next. Then Scorpius started laughing, and she started laughing, and they laughed until Hagrid and Albus found them and pulled them away from the sleeping man-eating monster.


End file.
